9 ms·

Loneliness in Midlife: A Growing Gap Between US and Europe

76 points by gulced 3y ago

mindwok 3y ago
Socialising with other people is messy, and hard, and often the payoff is not realised for quite some time. This is why people end up having so many social connections from their work, or other areas where you have frequent forced interactions: it takes time to get over that initial hump and see people as friends. Unfortunately our tendency as humans is to avoid this unpleasantness, and so we've built technologies and systems that embrace that. Food delivered to our door, dating apps that mean we never have to approach anyone, and embracing remote work where we never see anyone. Something has to change. Connecting with others is in our DNA, and is going to cause a lot of suffering as we continue down this path.
- F-Lexx 3y ago
  It's time for DNA editing tools to seriously shine.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- Gigachad 3y ago
  There is so much value in just being in the same room as other people. There are countless people who I have become close to that I otherwise would have ignored if we didn’t end up in the same space regularly. I currently work in a company that has an optional office and I can say for sure that I am many orders of magnitude closer to the people who work in office than the remote ones. I quite readily have meaningful personal conversations with the people who come in office while I could hardly tell you a single thing about the remote coworkers.
  - listenallyall 3y ago
    90% of success in life is just showing up
  - wood-porch 3y ago
    Yep, techs obsession with remote work is myopic in my opinion.
- NegativeLatency 3y ago
  Also hard when we’ve spread houses out so far that we don’t need to interact with neighbors.
  - randomdata 3y ago
    Except housing has become considerably more dense. It wasn't that long ago that most people lived rurally. Today, nearly everyone lives in an urban area.
scwyr 3y ago
Maybe it's the greater barrier to see people in US cities. People are generally further away bc less density
- dhoe 3y ago
  80% of the US lives in urban areas. Surely at least those should find some friends nearby?
- randomdata 3y ago
  My observation is that it is the ease of seeing people that leads to loneliness. The midlife crowd are off driving their kids to a different sporting event, or what have you, every day of the week. It is so easy to see people that they never stop to see the same person twice, so to speak, and thus the repeated engagement required to form friendships isn't likely to happen. If we look back at older generations, who notably lived in far less density than what is common today, they by and large had less trouble with loneliness as the difficulty in seeing people from limited transportation availability meant that they could only ever get to know their closest neighbours, which meant that is who they saw over and over, and that lead to friendship.
dr_kiszonka 3y ago
Still somewhat relevant: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone
alecst 3y ago
Original article: https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2024/03/middle-aged-americans-lonelier https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2024/03/middle-aged-...
lxe 3y ago
Befriend your neighbors. It's not as low-pressure as coworkers, but it's close. Not necessarily the immediate ones, but people in the neighborhood or apartment. Most people are normal, friendly and receptive.
- GaryNumanVevo 3y ago
  This really depends on your neighbors. I was staying at my parent's house for a few weeks. They live in a nice suburb, not quite a gated community. The police were called twice about a "suspicious" vehicle, which was just my car street parked in front of my parent's house.
  - em-bee 3y ago
    that's because your parents didn't befriend them. many people are only normal, friendly and receptive if you actually talk to them.
anon291 3y ago
I live in a 20s streetcar suburb and I know my neighbors because we all hang out on our front lawns and all eat at the same restaurants in walking distance. My friends who live in modern suburbs don't know their neighbors. People complain their kids don't leave the house... Where would the kids even go? We need to end the tyranny of the non grid suburb..suburbs should be on grids. Most things should be within walking distance so children can be more independent. Then it's like really easy to know your neighbor. I mean how could you not? You see them everytime you walk your kids to the park, everytime you're at the community pool, everytime you shop. I grew up in a 50s suburb and even that was a world's away from what my kids get Sometimes we've already solved our problems if only we're willing to look to the past.
- azinman2 3y ago
  Where are you walking to in a suburb? Everything is driving distance.
  - NegativeLatency 3y ago
    Older suburbs are slightly different, I live in one from the late 1920s and it’s actually pretty walkable. It’s mostly single family houses but there are corner stores, restaurants, a grocery, barber, etc. They’re called streetcar suburbs because they were originally developed by real estate speculators who would build a streetcar line and then sell the land to developers at a profit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb
    - azinman2 3y ago
      Sounds more like a town/city than a suburb to me.
      - NegativeLatency 3y ago
        It’s sub-urban, it was developed as one of the earlier sub-urban expansions of the city. Lots of suburbs predate the Levittown style of suburb we associate with suburbs today but that doesn’t change what it is and how it came to be. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown
adamcharnock 3y ago
I’m wondering why this is, and I can think of a few potential factors (broad generalisations follow): - The US is a low trust society - European culture typically places less emphasis on workplace friendships compared to the US. - As an another commenter said, the size of US cities. But also the difficulty & cost of getting around - There is something about the American demeanour that is surface-friendly, but also seems to discourage deeper/emotional connection. Whereas many European cultures can seem less smiley-friendly, but also more honest and genuine - I feel like the very strong Protestant work ethic in the US may play a factor. When productivity is so important I feel that must detract from other aspects of life (stress, free time, relocations)
- keiferski 3y ago
  I don’t think it’s related to the Protestant work ethic that much. After all, the loneliness problem is more of a recent phenomenon – and America used to be far more of a Protestant country. I would chalk it up more to the slow erosion of social expectations and standards, the proliferation of cell phones and social media, and the consistent push towards individualism and away from family/community values.
  - NegativeLatency 3y ago
    Don’t forget the commoditization and marketization of everything that businesses can get their hands on.
    - twojobsoneboss 3y ago
      Ding ding ding
  - riehwvfbk 3y ago
    I find that there is a peculiar kind of work ethic in the US (or at least in Silicon Valley), but it's something other than Protestant. It's relentlessly optimizing oneself to death. You can't just exercise, you need to be participating in some mudbeast games or run marathons or lift 5 times your body weight. You can't eat healthy, you have to religiously follow the latest fad diet and preach it while you are at it. You can't just work hard, you have to embrace hustle culture. Your kids need to be constantly exhausted from being in every sport and extracurricular you can sign them up for. Oh, and your efforts on all these axes must be quantified, tracked, and gamified. Preferably by an app you pay a subscription fee for. And if your psyche rebels against all this you need therapy and/or pills. Because otherwise you are simply not competitive. And that's the key: competitive. People don't have friends here. They have the Joneses to compete with.
qgin 3y ago
The article mentions social media as a reason for loneliness. Is the premise that social media replaces socializing that would have otherwise happened in person?
- fragmede 3y ago
  Yeah. It's nice to meet up with a friend and get a through answer as to how it's going, but if I've been following along your vacation through your social media feed, what is there to really talk about? Your social media feed isn't going to give me the whole story, but unless we really want to dig deep because we're really good friends, then there's not so much to talk about.
- tayo42 3y ago
  I think i text more since deactivating my Instagram account about a month ago.
davidw 3y ago
I'm a 'midlife' guy and I've lived in both Europe (Italy) and the US and... yeah. I had a better social life in Italy. We have friends here in the US too, but people by and large are a bit more superficial. Maybe they'll give you a big "Oh HIIIII, how AAAAARE you?!" at the supermarket, but even after all these years back in the US, when we go back to Italy, we'll get a super warm welcome and spend the evening chatting with friends there like we'd never left. I don't think it's something easily explained by this, that or the other thing. Denmark is different from Italy, and Oregon is different from Alabama. Even within Italy, Padova is very different from Palermo. I'm very 'urbanist', but it's not just that, although it helps. There's just a lot of things going on and you could probably write a book about it.
poopsmithe 3y ago
Lonely 40 year old here. I quit socializing because I couldn't afford to do the things my friends wanted to do. Eat and drink at bars, go to movies, travel to conventions. For a time, I was participating even though I couldn't afford. I racked up significant credit card debt. For me it's all about money, the language that communicates value. If my net worth is negative, that means I'm taking value away from society rather than contributing, and I won't put myself out there until I rectify that.
- xandrius 3y ago
  It seems that it wasn't your crowd, nothing necessarily wrong with that. Lots of fun activities are mostly free or require very little upfront costs. Outdoor activities are an example. Even just setting up a board game group is generally low cost. If you're interested in finding like-minded people, you'll find them! Keep it up :)
  - SauciestGNU 3y ago
    The cheap/free activities can draw you into spending a lot of money too, if you have it. I bicycle every day, and I spend a lot of my otherwise unallocated money on bike stuff. Good hiking gear gets expensive too. But you can also get away without buying most of that stuff and still enjoy your time.
roenxi 3y ago
There is a societal trend where wealth/HDI and # children are inversely correlated (https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate). The US is generally wealthier than the Europe and has a higher HDI. "loneliness" might be measuring the same weird effect; ie, related to wealth and comfort. I don't understand it, I just observe it.
fragmede 3y ago
I mean, people suck. I suck, you suck, your mom, and your brother sucks. Not all the time. Sometimes I'm able to be nice and kind and generous, but dealing with people is just so much work that it's easier to just not, especially when there's so much other stuff out there to do these days. So it's easier to stay at home and not invest time in socializing, leading to loneliness. it feels unnatural to force it after college and high school but you just have to put in the effort and people just don't want to do that, absent some other motivation. If there's a group project or something to bring people together, like an art piece, a float for a parade, or anything of that nature then there's space to connect and make friends. But one has to put in that effort and follow through, and without being paid to do it, in order to get to a point where you're not lonely and have friends. it helps if you're not a horrible person though.
- renewiltord 3y ago
  Least relatable comment on the site. Almost every person I know and love is a big plus to my life. If I could, all my friends and family would live within minutes of me, and they have almost all expressed this to me about me as well.
  - fragmede 3y ago
    but you're not lonely and thus aren't having the problem the article describes. I'm not lonely and sad and angry either, though I can see how my previous comment could make it seem that way. Outside of your happy circle of friends and family is this epidemic of loneliness that the article is reporting on, so it's not surprising that you can't relate if you're not having that problem. I'm trying to describe why we're apparently falling into this hole of loneliness and how to fight it. The other thing is to look at your relationships. The game Diplomacy has caused the end of many relationships because it exposes the true person inside, who will lie and cheat and steal to win a board game. You should try it with your friends and family sometime. Are your friends complete human beings, or do they only have a good side? Some people live in a happy world where they don't and are friends with them, and other people have relationships to whole human beings that suck sometimes. They're also awesome sometimes, which is why we're friends, but I'd rather see the whole picture than think they're perfect, just like me. I love my friends, and would love for them to all live down the street from me, (teleportation when?) but my other comment is coming from a place where they're also human, same as me.
mhsu 3y ago
That article talks about midlife, but loneliness starts well before people reach their 40s and 50s and is only getting worse. Per this HN post from last month, teenagers today hang out in person 50% less than teenagers from 20 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39378259 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39378259 I live and work in the Bay Area and have experienced this myself despite having worked at large tech companies, where in theory it should be easy to meet folks. Recently, instead of just reflecting on my situation, have started validating some potential ideas that could help tackle loneliness. If anyone is open to sharing how you've either overcome loneliness, or struggled to (like me), please hit me up. Email in profile.
- nerdface 3y ago
  I live in the Bay Area. The problem here is the temporary nature of those residing here. They tend to plan to leave after a few years when enough of their RSUs have vested to afford a nice home elsewhere. One thing that helped me enormously was… getting a dog. I’ll take multiple walks in the neighborhood each day and eventually got to know a whole bunch of neighbors. Even now I’ll go out for a brisk thirty minute walk only to end up spending multiple hours chatting with neighbors.
mrtksn 3y ago
What if the Europe's laid back work culture and stricter control on environment(that is work environment, food and natural environment, healthcare) produces better outcomes after all? The tech community loves to mock EU for being lazy or being anti-innovation or anti-business but at the end of the day life in Europe is pretty good. Food is good, its safe, people live healthy long lives - things reserved for the rich in the USA. Community preserving regulations are all over the Europe, which might make the housing markets less dynamic but once you are in you don't easily loose access to your community when your fortune isn't performing. Being the "old world", Europe has been over this stuff long ago and despite people imagining that bureaucrats of Brussels are making up the regulations, European love for strong government is rooted in past experiences with issues and their solutions.
- twojobsoneboss 3y ago
  Europe is objectively better for salaried workers who will never have a shot at early retirement (which is prob 90% of the US population) US is better for business owners and entrepreneurs and maybe the super ambitious
  - mrtksn 3y ago
    Europe is better for the rich too, just not for getting even richer. The rich in EU are having great time, there are many hot spots for the billionaire class as well as the other less rich but still wealthy. They only complain about how they can't do whatever they want to the workers and the nature. Europe is also fine for startups, its just not good for scale ups. When successful with tech and the product, startups go to the USA to try to become gargantuan(which also affects the startups, because investors are less motivated to bet on them becoming scale-ups).
    - twojobsoneboss 3y ago
      Yeah I was thinking more bootstrapped businesses or small businesses - the tax advantages for such businesses you get in the US are insane
- 3y ago
tayo42 3y ago
Misleading title, I wonder if all the speculators read the details? > European nations displayed more varied patterns. For instance, England and Mediterranean Europe demonstrated similar increases in loneliness for later-born participants ( I don't get why it's written like all of Europe is the same?
incomingpain 3y ago
I saw Jonathan Haidt's new book on the subject. I havent read it but I expect he's throwing the blame at the feet of social media and mobile devices. In my opinion he's blaming what's holding things together. Humans are social beings and social media gives you a weaker form of social interaction. Whereas in person social interaction is what is necessary. >Data were collected from 2002 to 2020 and only included responses given when participants were between the ages of 45 and 65. Completely useless. Why ruin your research this badly? Why focus on the least impacted age cohorts? Lets consider why we have so much less in person social interaction. If we go back in time to when it wasnt a problem. Where did people get this done? Church, Bar, and smoke breaks. Church attendance is at record lows? I know im not religious, only spiritual. Good ole government is behind this one. Bar? Government has basically ended that in the name of MADD. SMoke breaks? Government basically ended that because of Lung cancer. So basically government came in and "unintentionally???" ended in person social interaction. Now we have a loneliness epidemic and it's going to take 1 sweet talking libertarian to tear the government down.
iteratethis 3y ago
"The study defends the promotion of social safety nets, through generous family and work policies, which may lessen midlife loneliness by reducing financial pressures and work-family conflict, in addition to strengthening job security and workplace flexibility." An interesting article with a confusing ending. These policy proposals do not at all seem linked to the root causes mentioned earlier. I would be skeptical that giving people more money/time off significantly addresses the problem. I think what stands out about the US is geographic spread. It seems common to move a few states away to truly start a "blank slate" life. You lose physical access to your original family, friends in the town you were born, and maybe even the college you went to. I'll compare to that my "typical" European situation, which is characterized by a lack of geographic spread in the tiny country of the Netherlands. I still live in the small town in which I was born. And most I've ever known from this town are still here or in adjacent towns. I have immediate physical access to "kids" I've known for decades, everybody I went to school with (except for college, which was further away) my parents, in-laws, 20 or so aunts and uncles and a shitload of their offspring. So this is an additive network of blood (family), friends, co-students, neighbors. It's a solid network in quantity and quality. It's not a lucky shot because I decided to stay in my town, the point is that everybody stays in the town because they don't need to move a thousand miles for opportunities. My work actually is quite a long commute away and this reveals another typical European phenomenon: on average, Europeans don't have a strong incentive to build an intimate social network at work. They're less likely to build deep friendships or do dating there. For the simple reason that they already have a network back home.

76 points by gulced 3y ago

Socialising with other people is messy, and hard, and often the payoff is not realised for quite some time. This is why people end up having so many social connections from their work, or other areas where you have frequent forced interactions: it takes time to get over that initial hump and see people as friends. Unfortunately our tendency as humans is to avoid this unpleasantness, and so we've built technologies and systems that embrace that. Food delivered to our door, dating apps that mean we never have to approach anyone, and embracing remote work where we never see anyone. Something has to change. Connecting with others is in our DNA, and is going to cause a lot of suffering as we continue down this path.

F-Lexx 3y ago
It's time for DNA editing tools to seriously shine.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
Gigachad 3y ago
There is so much value in just being in the same room as other people. There are countless people who I have become close to that I otherwise would have ignored if we didn’t end up in the same space regularly. I currently work in a company that has an optional office and I can say for sure that I am many orders of magnitude closer to the people who work in office than the remote ones. I quite readily have meaningful personal conversations with the people who come in office while I could hardly tell you a single thing about the remote coworkers.
- listenallyall 3y ago
  90% of success in life is just showing up
- wood-porch 3y ago
  Yep, techs obsession with remote work is myopic in my opinion.
NegativeLatency 3y ago
Also hard when we’ve spread houses out so far that we don’t need to interact with neighbors.
- randomdata 3y ago
  Except housing has become considerably more dense. It wasn't that long ago that most people lived rurally. Today, nearly everyone lives in an urban area.

scwyr 3y ago

Maybe it's the greater barrier to see people in US cities. People are generally further away bc less density

dhoe 3y ago
80% of the US lives in urban areas. Surely at least those should find some friends nearby?
randomdata 3y ago
My observation is that it is the ease of seeing people that leads to loneliness. The midlife crowd are off driving their kids to a different sporting event, or what have you, every day of the week. It is so easy to see people that they never stop to see the same person twice, so to speak, and thus the repeated engagement required to form friendships isn't likely to happen. If we look back at older generations, who notably lived in far less density than what is common today, they by and large had less trouble with loneliness as the difficulty in seeing people from limited transportation availability meant that they could only ever get to know their closest neighbours, which meant that is who they saw over and over, and that lead to friendship.

dr_kiszonka 3y ago

Still somewhat relevant: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone

alecst 3y ago

Original article: https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2024/03/middle-aged-americans-lonelier https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2024/03/middle-aged-...

lxe 3y ago

Befriend your neighbors. It's not as low-pressure as coworkers, but it's close. Not necessarily the immediate ones, but people in the neighborhood or apartment. Most people are normal, friendly and receptive.

GaryNumanVevo 3y ago
This really depends on your neighbors. I was staying at my parent's house for a few weeks. They live in a nice suburb, not quite a gated community. The police were called twice about a "suspicious" vehicle, which was just my car street parked in front of my parent's house.
- em-bee 3y ago
  that's because your parents didn't befriend them. many people are only normal, friendly and receptive if you actually talk to them.

anon291 3y ago

I live in a 20s streetcar suburb and I know my neighbors because we all hang out on our front lawns and all eat at the same restaurants in walking distance. My friends who live in modern suburbs don't know their neighbors. People complain their kids don't leave the house... Where would the kids even go? We need to end the tyranny of the non grid suburb..suburbs should be on grids. Most things should be within walking distance so children can be more independent. Then it's like really easy to know your neighbor. I mean how could you not? You see them everytime you walk your kids to the park, everytime you're at the community pool, everytime you shop. I grew up in a 50s suburb and even that was a world's away from what my kids get Sometimes we've already solved our problems if only we're willing to look to the past.

azinman2 3y ago
Where are you walking to in a suburb? Everything is driving distance.
- NegativeLatency 3y ago
  Older suburbs are slightly different, I live in one from the late 1920s and it’s actually pretty walkable. It’s mostly single family houses but there are corner stores, restaurants, a grocery, barber, etc. They’re called streetcar suburbs because they were originally developed by real estate speculators who would build a streetcar line and then sell the land to developers at a profit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb
  - azinman2 3y ago
    Sounds more like a town/city than a suburb to me.
    - NegativeLatency 3y ago
      It’s sub-urban, it was developed as one of the earlier sub-urban expansions of the city. Lots of suburbs predate the Levittown style of suburb we associate with suburbs today but that doesn’t change what it is and how it came to be. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown

adamcharnock 3y ago

I’m wondering why this is, and I can think of a few potential factors (broad generalisations follow): - The US is a low trust society - European culture typically places less emphasis on workplace friendships compared to the US. - As an another commenter said, the size of US cities. But also the difficulty & cost of getting around - There is something about the American demeanour that is surface-friendly, but also seems to discourage deeper/emotional connection. Whereas many European cultures can seem less smiley-friendly, but also more honest and genuine - I feel like the very strong Protestant work ethic in the US may play a factor. When productivity is so important I feel that must detract from other aspects of life (stress, free time, relocations)

keiferski 3y ago
I don’t think it’s related to the Protestant work ethic that much. After all, the loneliness problem is more of a recent phenomenon – and America used to be far more of a Protestant country. I would chalk it up more to the slow erosion of social expectations and standards, the proliferation of cell phones and social media, and the consistent push towards individualism and away from family/community values.
- NegativeLatency 3y ago
  Don’t forget the commoditization and marketization of everything that businesses can get their hands on.
  - twojobsoneboss 3y ago
    Ding ding ding
- riehwvfbk 3y ago
  I find that there is a peculiar kind of work ethic in the US (or at least in Silicon Valley), but it's something other than Protestant. It's relentlessly optimizing oneself to death. You can't just exercise, you need to be participating in some mudbeast games or run marathons or lift 5 times your body weight. You can't eat healthy, you have to religiously follow the latest fad diet and preach it while you are at it. You can't just work hard, you have to embrace hustle culture. Your kids need to be constantly exhausted from being in every sport and extracurricular you can sign them up for. Oh, and your efforts on all these axes must be quantified, tracked, and gamified. Preferably by an app you pay a subscription fee for. And if your psyche rebels against all this you need therapy and/or pills. Because otherwise you are simply not competitive. And that's the key: competitive. People don't have friends here. They have the Joneses to compete with.

qgin 3y ago

The article mentions social media as a reason for loneliness. Is the premise that social media replaces socializing that would have otherwise happened in person?

fragmede 3y ago
Yeah. It's nice to meet up with a friend and get a through answer as to how it's going, but if I've been following along your vacation through your social media feed, what is there to really talk about? Your social media feed isn't going to give me the whole story, but unless we really want to dig deep because we're really good friends, then there's not so much to talk about.
tayo42 3y ago
I think i text more since deactivating my Instagram account about a month ago.

davidw 3y ago

I'm a 'midlife' guy and I've lived in both Europe (Italy) and the US and... yeah. I had a better social life in Italy. We have friends here in the US too, but people by and large are a bit more superficial. Maybe they'll give you a big "Oh HIIIII, how AAAAARE you?!" at the supermarket, but even after all these years back in the US, when we go back to Italy, we'll get a super warm welcome and spend the evening chatting with friends there like we'd never left. I don't think it's something easily explained by this, that or the other thing. Denmark is different from Italy, and Oregon is different from Alabama. Even within Italy, Padova is very different from Palermo. I'm very 'urbanist', but it's not just that, although it helps. There's just a lot of things going on and you could probably write a book about it.

poopsmithe 3y ago

Lonely 40 year old here. I quit socializing because I couldn't afford to do the things my friends wanted to do. Eat and drink at bars, go to movies, travel to conventions. For a time, I was participating even though I couldn't afford. I racked up significant credit card debt. For me it's all about money, the language that communicates value. If my net worth is negative, that means I'm taking value away from society rather than contributing, and I won't put myself out there until I rectify that.

xandrius 3y ago
It seems that it wasn't your crowd, nothing necessarily wrong with that. Lots of fun activities are mostly free or require very little upfront costs. Outdoor activities are an example. Even just setting up a board game group is generally low cost. If you're interested in finding like-minded people, you'll find them! Keep it up :)
- SauciestGNU 3y ago
  The cheap/free activities can draw you into spending a lot of money too, if you have it. I bicycle every day, and I spend a lot of my otherwise unallocated money on bike stuff. Good hiking gear gets expensive too. But you can also get away without buying most of that stuff and still enjoy your time.

roenxi 3y ago

There is a societal trend where wealth/HDI and # children are inversely correlated (https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate). The US is generally wealthier than the Europe and has a higher HDI. "loneliness" might be measuring the same weird effect; ie, related to wealth and comfort. I don't understand it, I just observe it.

fragmede 3y ago

I mean, people suck. I suck, you suck, your mom, and your brother sucks. Not all the time. Sometimes I'm able to be nice and kind and generous, but dealing with people is just so much work that it's easier to just not, especially when there's so much other stuff out there to do these days. So it's easier to stay at home and not invest time in socializing, leading to loneliness. it feels unnatural to force it after college and high school but you just have to put in the effort and people just don't want to do that, absent some other motivation. If there's a group project or something to bring people together, like an art piece, a float for a parade, or anything of that nature then there's space to connect and make friends. But one has to put in that effort and follow through, and without being paid to do it, in order to get to a point where you're not lonely and have friends. it helps if you're not a horrible person though.

renewiltord 3y ago
Least relatable comment on the site. Almost every person I know and love is a big plus to my life. If I could, all my friends and family would live within minutes of me, and they have almost all expressed this to me about me as well.
- fragmede 3y ago
  but you're not lonely and thus aren't having the problem the article describes. I'm not lonely and sad and angry either, though I can see how my previous comment could make it seem that way. Outside of your happy circle of friends and family is this epidemic of loneliness that the article is reporting on, so it's not surprising that you can't relate if you're not having that problem. I'm trying to describe why we're apparently falling into this hole of loneliness and how to fight it. The other thing is to look at your relationships. The game Diplomacy has caused the end of many relationships because it exposes the true person inside, who will lie and cheat and steal to win a board game. You should try it with your friends and family sometime. Are your friends complete human beings, or do they only have a good side? Some people live in a happy world where they don't and are friends with them, and other people have relationships to whole human beings that suck sometimes. They're also awesome sometimes, which is why we're friends, but I'd rather see the whole picture than think they're perfect, just like me. I love my friends, and would love for them to all live down the street from me, (teleportation when?) but my other comment is coming from a place where they're also human, same as me.

mhsu 3y ago

That article talks about midlife, but loneliness starts well before people reach their 40s and 50s and is only getting worse. Per this HN post from last month, teenagers today hang out in person 50% less than teenagers from 20 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39378259 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39378259 I live and work in the Bay Area and have experienced this myself despite having worked at large tech companies, where in theory it should be easy to meet folks. Recently, instead of just reflecting on my situation, have started validating some potential ideas that could help tackle loneliness. If anyone is open to sharing how you've either overcome loneliness, or struggled to (like me), please hit me up. Email in profile.

nerdface 3y ago
I live in the Bay Area. The problem here is the temporary nature of those residing here. They tend to plan to leave after a few years when enough of their RSUs have vested to afford a nice home elsewhere. One thing that helped me enormously was… getting a dog. I’ll take multiple walks in the neighborhood each day and eventually got to know a whole bunch of neighbors. Even now I’ll go out for a brisk thirty minute walk only to end up spending multiple hours chatting with neighbors.

mrtksn 3y ago

What if the Europe's laid back work culture and stricter control on environment(that is work environment, food and natural environment, healthcare) produces better outcomes after all? The tech community loves to mock EU for being lazy or being anti-innovation or anti-business but at the end of the day life in Europe is pretty good. Food is good, its safe, people live healthy long lives - things reserved for the rich in the USA. Community preserving regulations are all over the Europe, which might make the housing markets less dynamic but once you are in you don't easily loose access to your community when your fortune isn't performing. Being the "old world", Europe has been over this stuff long ago and despite people imagining that bureaucrats of Brussels are making up the regulations, European love for strong government is rooted in past experiences with issues and their solutions.

twojobsoneboss 3y ago
Europe is objectively better for salaried workers who will never have a shot at early retirement (which is prob 90% of the US population) US is better for business owners and entrepreneurs and maybe the super ambitious
- mrtksn 3y ago
  Europe is better for the rich too, just not for getting even richer. The rich in EU are having great time, there are many hot spots for the billionaire class as well as the other less rich but still wealthy. They only complain about how they can't do whatever they want to the workers and the nature. Europe is also fine for startups, its just not good for scale ups. When successful with tech and the product, startups go to the USA to try to become gargantuan(which also affects the startups, because investors are less motivated to bet on them becoming scale-ups).
  - twojobsoneboss 3y ago
    Yeah I was thinking more bootstrapped businesses or small businesses - the tax advantages for such businesses you get in the US are insane
3y ago

tayo42 3y ago

Misleading title, I wonder if all the speculators read the details? > European nations displayed more varied patterns. For instance, England and Mediterranean Europe demonstrated similar increases in loneliness for later-born participants ( I don't get why it's written like all of Europe is the same?

incomingpain 3y ago

I saw Jonathan Haidt's new book on the subject. I havent read it but I expect he's throwing the blame at the feet of social media and mobile devices. In my opinion he's blaming what's holding things together. Humans are social beings and social media gives you a weaker form of social interaction. Whereas in person social interaction is what is necessary. >Data were collected from 2002 to 2020 and only included responses given when participants were between the ages of 45 and 65. Completely useless. Why ruin your research this badly? Why focus on the least impacted age cohorts? Lets consider why we have so much less in person social interaction. If we go back in time to when it wasnt a problem. Where did people get this done? Church, Bar, and smoke breaks. Church attendance is at record lows? I know im not religious, only spiritual. Good ole government is behind this one. Bar? Government has basically ended that in the name of MADD. SMoke breaks? Government basically ended that because of Lung cancer. So basically government came in and "unintentionally???" ended in person social interaction. Now we have a loneliness epidemic and it's going to take 1 sweet talking libertarian to tear the government down.

iteratethis 3y ago

"The study defends the promotion of social safety nets, through generous family and work policies, which may lessen midlife loneliness by reducing financial pressures and work-family conflict, in addition to strengthening job security and workplace flexibility." An interesting article with a confusing ending. These policy proposals do not at all seem linked to the root causes mentioned earlier. I would be skeptical that giving people more money/time off significantly addresses the problem. I think what stands out about the US is geographic spread. It seems common to move a few states away to truly start a "blank slate" life. You lose physical access to your original family, friends in the town you were born, and maybe even the college you went to. I'll compare to that my "typical" European situation, which is characterized by a lack of geographic spread in the tiny country of the Netherlands. I still live in the small town in which I was born. And most I've ever known from this town are still here or in adjacent towns. I have immediate physical access to "kids" I've known for decades, everybody I went to school with (except for college, which was further away) my parents, in-laws, 20 or so aunts and uncles and a shitload of their offspring. So this is an additive network of blood (family), friends, co-students, neighbors. It's a solid network in quantity and quality. It's not a lucky shot because I decided to stay in my town, the point is that everybody stays in the town because they don't need to move a thousand miles for opportunities. My work actually is quite a long commute away and this reveals another typical European phenomenon: on average, Europeans don't have a strong incentive to build an intimate social network at work. They're less likely to build deep friendships or do dating there. For the simple reason that they already have a network back home.